


Broken dreams

by Onehelluvapilot



Series: Knights and Hunters [5]
Category: Merlin (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, Dark, Djinni & Genies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Hurt Lancelot, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Protective Gwaine, References to Depression, no beta we die like women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot
Summary: Lancelot struggles with the aftereffects of a djinn's curse with Gwaine by his side.Major Character Death occurs only in a dream.





	Broken dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Um, this is darker than it was supposed to be.

Lance could still feel his slashed wrists when he woke up, and still groggy, it took him a minute to realize that the pain was from a coarse rope tied around them. His feet dangled a few inches above the ground, but he suspected that his legs wouldn’t support him if given the opportunity. There was a needle in his neck, pumping him full of some drug cocktail. It was hard to stay awake and hard to tell how much time had passed. The djinn came into view in the abandoned warehouse, but he was running, apparently in fear, and Gwaine was behind him with a silver knife dipped in lamb's blood in hand. Lance wondered distantly about what confused butcher had given it to him as he watched his partner wrestle with the man with the glowing blue tattoos. The hunter won of course, plunging the blade into the supernatural monster's heart. He stood up when it stopped twitching, pulling the weapon out with the movement, and turned to look for his partner.

“Lance!” Gwaine cried, rushing over to 

where the djinn’s victim hung. He quickly sawed through the rope holding him up with the bloody silver knife, pulled him close against his chest as his knees buckled. Lancelot knew he should try to stand on his own two feet, make it easier for both of them to get out of here, but Gwaine  _ smelled _ . He smelled like unwashed man and filthy flannel and their truck and  _ really bad  _ cologne. He smelled real and he was alive and he had to stop and stand still and revel in that, let it sink in. “You okay?” the hunter demanded in  _ that voice _ , which he hadn't heard in so long.

“Not injured. Pretty damn far from okay,”  Lancelot admitted, because those were different things but both important information. He was shaking, and it wasn't just because the warehouse was freezing.

“Okay. Can you stand?” He nodded against the man's shoulder, a little reluctantly. Gwaine took one hand off from his chest to untie his hands, leaving the other comfortingly around his shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.” He helped his partner back to their truck and left him there while he went back to deal with the bodies. 

Exhausted but unwilling to fall asleep, Lancelot struggled to keep his eyes open and stay alert. It felt like a stakeout- but no, he'd never actually been on a stakeout. That had only happened in the dream caused by the djinn’s poison. The memory was likely just a conglomeration of scenes from the cop shows he used to watch on tv. Most of the memories probably were.

Gwaine returned twenty minutes later to a partner who was trying desperately not to think. “Hospital, diner, bar, or motel?” he asked succinctly.

“We're broke,” Lancelot replied, though he sounded confused about it, as if trying to remember something from long ago.  From years ago.

“Then I'll write them a fucking check. C'mon, which do you need most: medicine, a bed, food, or a drink?”

“I don't know!” Lancelot barked back. “Nothing in this place fucking feels right.” It was bad, if he was swearing. Normally he was incredibly mild-mouthed, especially for a soldier and a hunter.

“I'm taking you to your sister's,” Gwaine said, turning the key in the ignition. It was the only thing he could thing to do.

“No!” Lancelot barked suddenly, startling both of them. “No. Anything but that… I need… I need to be able to keep what happened in  _ there _ seperate from out here.”

“Well, tell me where else to go then. Because it's clear you need a bed. A real bed, not a truck bed and not these seats. If you don’t want a motel… I think I worked a job the next town over a few years ago. They might still be grateful enough to let us crash at their place for the night. That sound alright?”

“Okay,” Lance said softly.

 

* * *

 

It didn't take them long to reach the approximate location of the house, and Gwaine only needed a few laps around the block to remember which house it was. He had Lancelot wait in the car as he went up to the house, still not entirely sure if it was the right one or if he'd actually saved their neighbors. It was hard to tell in the suburbs, where where everything looked alike. It didn't help that he'd never actually gone in the front door; last time he’d broken in through the back entrance (if this was the right house that is) and left the same way before the cops arrived. His fears were assuaged though, as a deeply familiar woman opened the door after he knocked.

She was wearing the same pajamas Gwaine remembered, with the white foxes on them, but it had to be a different pair because they were missing the bloodstains. Funny, that he could remember her night clothes (though they were rather distinctive and stuck out in his mind for good reason) but not her name.  Laura maybe, or Sarah? No, that was Lance’s sister's name. It was something that ended in an A though.

“Gwaine!” she almost-shouted in surprise. Of course she remembered his name. The night they had met had been much more memorable for her, as she had discovered the supernatural and nearly died and been saved by a handsome stranger that she may or may not have taken to bed afterwards, than it was for him, as that was just a typical Thursday for a hunter. He decided to attribute it to that, rather than to just his own bad manners. 

“Hey,” he replied, avoiding the temptation to flirt. She was older than she had been, but the years had been good to her and she had been older than him before anyway, and he had to remind himself that he had a loving boyfriend who very much needed his attention right now. That sobered him up pretty quickly.

“Are the creatures back; are we in danger?” she asked. It seemed she wasn't preoccupied with thinking about their night together either.

“No, you’re safe,” he reassured her. “I actually need a favor from you.”

“Of course! Anything.” In any other circumstance Gwaine’s mind would go dirty places with that, but she said it innocently and that wasn't why he was here.

“My boyfriend and I need a place to stay. Probably just for the night. I wouldn't ask, except he’s had a pretty rough go of it recently, and we can't afford a hotel room right now.”

“Well, I can only offer you a pullout couch, and you'll have to share it, but if that's alright you and your partner are more than welcome in my home for as long as you need,” she welcomed them. She sounded more motherly than flirtatious, which Gwaine was glad of. “Pull your truck into the driveway and bring him up.”

“Thank you,” he said genuinely. The woman waited at the door as he did as she instructed, helping Lancelot out of the truck after pulling it off the street. He was steadier on his feet now, but he still took the hand that was offered to him. With his free hand, Gwaine grabbed one of their duffel bags as well. The lighter one, full of more clothes and fewer weapons, as they were likely to be relatively safe for the night. Especially with the line of salt they saw painted on in a low stripe around the base of the house and the edge of a well-constructed devil's trap peeking out from under the doormat.

He let her introduce herself when they got back up to the door, hoping she just attributed it to bad manners.

“I'm Eliza,” she said, standing in the doorway. She started to offer her hand for the new man to shake, before she realized that his was shaking already.

“It's a pleasure to meet you ma'am. My name is Lancelot. Thank you for letting us stay in your home.” The conversation paused for a minute.

“Aren't you going to invite us in?” Gwaine nudged teasingly.

“Oh no, I learned my lesson about that, “ Eliza said, turning away out of the doorway but offering no word of welcome. “Lock the door behind you,” she instructed after they were inside. Lancelot turned and double checked all five deadbolts. “Do you boys want something to eat?  There's some leftover chicken soup I could heat up for you.”

“That sounds great,” Gwaine said. She sat them down at the table with hot bowls while she put some sheets on the pull out bed for them. Lancelot couldn't finish his soup, feeling nauseous, and his boyfriend cleaned the bowl for him. They didn't get home cooked meals very often.

“I'm gonna go to bed myself now, but don't hesitate to call me if you need anything,” Eliza said gently before she went upstairs. “Oh, uh, Henry might come downstairs at an ungodly hour in the morning to watch cartoons, so just tell him to go into the kitchen if you want some more rest. Sorry there isn't much privacy.”

“It's alright,” Gwaine said. He remembered Henry vaguely as a fairly young baby, maybe six months old. He'd be starting kindergarten soon now. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

As soon as she was gone, Gwaine shifted over to where Lancelot sat on the edge of the bed and put an arm around his shoulders and squeezing gently. He was still shaking, hands clenching in each other, biting his lip, and barely reacted to the other man's presence. 

“How long did you spend in there?” the hunter asked gently. He knew time worked differently in the dream world the djinn threw their victims into, and Lancelot had been gone for nearly two days. They had seemed like very long days, but were likely nothing compared to what Lancelot had lived through. Even so, he wasn't expecting the answer he got.

“Two years, five months,” Lance replied softly.

“Jesus. Where were you? What was the fantasy, I mean?”

“9/11 never happened. I never joined the army, never went to Afghanistan or Iraq. Became a cop instead.”

“Guess you couldn't help but help people, huh?” Gwaine asked in fond amusement. It just seemed to make Lancelot uncomfortable though, as he rubbed at his forearms and looked away.

“I did my job so well,” he snarled at himself under his breath.

“What's that?”

“Sarah died. I hadn't been living with them when Andy turned, and only showed up after the cops were called. He had killed Sarah before you killed him, and seeing you there with a flamethrower and covered in blood, I arrested you for both of their deaths because the version of me in that world hadn't seen the Rougaroo, only the dead brother in law, and didn't believe in the monster Jasmine told me he'd turned into.”

Gwaine remembered the real life version of that night vividly.  He'd tracked the cat-killing monster to the house where Lancelot, having recently been honorably discharged from the army, was living with his sister and her family. At the time, the hunter had actually suspected the soldier. He'd been on his way up to the house with a flamethrower to interrogate and kill him  when he heard the gunshot. Upon breaking down the door, he'd found his suspect, with a ragged bite taken out of his arm, trying to protect his sister and niece from his brother-in-law the monster with a handgun. He'd helped keep the two women safe while Gwaine burned their husband and father alive.

In this universe, Lancelot had made sure he got out of the house and covered for him when the cops arrived. A week or so later, he'd reached out to the hunter, who some instinct had kept in town, about wanting to save more people and hunt more things. 

Apparently in the alternate universe created by the djinn, things turned out differently.

“The lore says that djinn are supposed to put you in a fantasy so great that you don't want to leave it, but this one was only heaven for about a minute,” Lancelot said. It wasn't that Gwaine had never heard him speak softly, but his voice sounded different now. It was the same tone he used after a flashback. Shaken, trying to be brave.

“What happened in that minute?” he asked, wanting the soldier to remember the good stuff.

“I woke up, and I wasn't sore or in pain for once, and after thirty seconds of just lying there Jasmine came in and jumped on the bed by my feet.”

“Jasmine?” Gwaine queried. Normally his niece went by Tazzy, because she “can be a right devil sometimes,” as Sarah would growl  playfully while she tickled her daughter. 

“She didn't like her nickname there. Course, I had to go call her by it and ask where her mother was and ruin the illusion and everything else. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I'd adopted her, because she was an  _ orphan _ for God's sake, and that I was trying to raise her by myself and doing a bang-up job,” Lance snarled at himself again.

“I'm sure you didn't do too badly.” It was weird for Gwaine to think of his boyfriend as a surrogate father, though he had no doubt he'd be good at the role.

“Don't you fucking tell me you're sure about anything that happened there. You weren't there. My wish fucking ruined her life and I couldn't fix it. She woke up screaming every single night, either crying for her mom or begging her dad not to hurt her or both. No one had believed her about the monster, not even me. Everyone had been telling her for a year that she hadn't really seen what she had seen, trying to help her they thought, but really just making her PTSD worse. And I thought it would be better to acknowledge it, tell her that monsters were real, but that just made her scared. And my colleagues, in the police department, started to think I'd lost it. Especially when I started trying to get you out of jail, by going back on my previous testimonies and trying to get the case re-evaluated. You had no fucking clue why I was doing it, and you weren't the most helpful at first, until I explained.”

“Sorry,” Gwaine apologized, and that just got a smile that he never wanted to see again because it was so sad.

“It wasn't really you, I know. It was just a parody of you created from my memories and subconscious and the djinn’s magic and drugs, like everyone there was. But you felt more real than they did. Maybe because you believed me, sort of, after I explained. We didn't get a lot of time together, just visiting hours once a week, but when you died-”

“I died?” Gwaine couldn't help but interrupt. He pulled Lancelot closer against his side.

“A monster got to you in your cell, after lights out. Just tore you apart.”

“It wasn't real,” he soothed. He didn't assure him that that couldn't happen, couldn't lie even to reassure him.

“It fucking felt real. It felt just as real as this does now. I thought it was real. That's why it took me so long to get out. If I killed myself, I thought I might just die. And Jasmine had already lost both her parents and I couldn't put her through losing me too. I didn't know for sure what was the dream until I woke up.”

Gwaine resisted the joke on the tip of his tongue about needing a totem. He wondered if they'd ever watch Inception again, which had been one of Lancelot’s favorite movies before.

“When I did slit my wrists, I almost didn't care if I'd wake up. I just couldn't take it anymore. I hadn't ever been in what would be considered a healthy mindset there, but after you died, I kind of just fell apart.” He said all of this disturbingly calmly, seeming barely affected by it, though it had happened, or at least he had experienced it, just a few hours ago. “Merlin, who was my partner on the force there instead of an old army buddy, stepped in to help me care for Jasmine, but without you and without Sarah and with what I thought was a chance to get you back, he couldn't really do anything. Here, let go for just a second; I wanna lie down.” 

Gwaine did as he requested, pulling back only slightly and staying right by his boyfriend's side as he pulled his feet in and lay down. He waited for Lancelot to nestle himself back against him before enveloping him in a tight embrace from behind. Putting a caloused hand over his heart to feel it beat.

“You're glad you're awake now though, right?” he had to ask, had to be sure. “You're  not…”

“Suicidal?” Lancelot finished. “No. Not now that I'm here with you, and that I know that this is real. I don't think I'm quite  _ okay _ , yet, but I'm used to that. And it'll get better.” It was similar to the kind of pep talks he gave himself after waking up from a nightmare. Which was exactly what had happened, just on a different scale.

“Yeah, it will,” Gwaine encouraged. “And I'll be right here with you the whole time.”

“Can you wake me up if it seems like I'm dreaming?” he asked, after a very large yawn.

“Okay. I'll be right here.”


End file.
